Puppet

This article may contain outdated information that is inaccurate for the current version of the game. It was last updated for
1.3.

A puppet is a country that is de jure independent but is more or less controlled by another, often stronger nation, through an installed government that is loyal to the controlling nation.

When a country is puppeted, its government is replaced by one installed by the puppet master, matching the puppet master's ideology.
If a puppet master declares war, they can call in their puppets as allies. In the peace conference that ensues after a successful war, puppeted countries will not be able to make demands by themselves, though the puppet master can dictate demands in favor of its puppets if they choose to do so. As a result, an already puppeted country cannot puppet other countries.

If a puppet master is forced to capitulate, its puppets will automatically capitulate as well if it isn't in a faction with a major country that has yet to capitulate. If a puppet master capitulates but there are still majors in a puppets faction, the puppet will earn autonomy points if TFV/DOD/WTT is enabled. Upon defeating a puppet master (and other majors in faction with it), the victorious nations can choose to detach puppeted countries from their puppet master, making them free-standing nations again. Communist countries get a 70% cost reduction for puppeting other countries.

The puppet master nation may import goods from its puppet or subject state at a rate discounted below the standard trade rate of up to 8 loads of a resource per factory. If the Together for Victory DLC is active, a puppet or an integrated puppet (such as Malaya) provides 80 loads per factory to its British master (90% discount), while British Raj colony offers 16 loads (50% discount) and British dominions offer 10 loads per factory (25% discount). Without the DLC, the Raj is a puppet and the only discount is for puppets.

The puppet master may access far more of the puppet's resources than it could otherwise with its own trade laws if directly annexed. Extra Trade for overlord provides a bonus on top of the puppet's Trade Law to market rate. So if a Puppet would have 200 Steel available and have Free Trade, typically only 80% of their resources go to Export (160 steel) the rest can be kept for themselves. With the Extra trade bonus of +25% (from Dominion level autonomy) this brings the total steel available to export from a puppet to 170 (160 + 10, where 10 is 25% of 40, where 40 is 200 - 160) out of their total of 200. This can mean with Integrated Puppets the puppet master may purchase all of their resources even if they switch to 'Closed Economy'. Indeed, the extra trade to overlord is applied to the resources not exported.

At certain levels of autonomy a puppet master may request license production of a puppet's equipment, at a discount or even completely free. In addition to being given access to equipment without needing to research it, there is also a bonus conferred to researching that equipment while the license is in effect. Speeding up research for domestic equipment.

It is possible to "request" control over the troops of the puppet; this provides additional divisions for the puppet master, although puppet divisions may not be very well designed.

When doing so, it is desirable for the player to lend-lease appropriate equipment to the puppet nation which will allow for faster division training as well as combat any existing puppet equipment shortages. Alternatively, the master may request lend-lease equipment from the puppet to drain its equipment stocks.

The master can effectively boost their own manpower by raising units including a mix of master and puppet manpower (70% for a Colony, 90% for a Puppet, and 100% for an Integrated Puppet). Such colonial divisions are controlled by the puppet master. The templates for such colonial divisions are those taken or adapted from the puppet's own template list (open by clicking the Crown icon at the top of the Division Designer in the Recruit/Deploy menu). If a puppet is newly released, it will receive templates of the puppet master.

Puppeting countries can often be safer than annexing them as it generates less World Tension than territorial annexation, reducing the risk of foreign intervention by other potentially hostile countries.

If Together for Victory is not active, a puppet retains full control of the territory you grant it, meaning that the master cannot build anything in a puppet's territory. It is then also not possible to annex a puppet, meaning that creating a puppet causes the mother nation to lose the ability to utilize the puppet's territory for construction.

Puppeting small countries with few resources is less efficient than simply annexing the country, especially if the puppet has less than 8 units of the resource, as factories still have to be paid.

If you give too much land to a puppet, it may refuse to give you your land back.

A puppet receives a reduced number of factories for giving resources to its master. This can hinder early-game industry development.

A puppet can neither justify war goals nor can it declare war on another country, in addition to that, puppets cannot make demands in a peace conference, meaning that a puppet's territorial expansion is entirely decided by the puppet master.

If a puppet master declares war on a nation, they can freely force the puppet into the war. If matched up against a stronger opponent and fighting alone, the odds are clearly not in its favor. Even if the puppet proves stronger and defeats that enemy, it gets nothing but glory (and autonomy points) from the war unless the puppet master provides something in the peace or thereafter.

A puppet has to deal with autonomy or risk further disadvantages in favor of its overlord. One of the quickest and most reliable ways to raise autonomy is to use a continous focus, wasting time that could be used for completeing other national focuses. However, puppets with unique focus trees usually have a national focus that is even quicker than said method.

One puppet may act more or less independent than another. To represent the difference between largely autonomous dominions like Canada or Australia, somewhat autonomous colonies like the British Raj, and totally subservient puppet states like Malaya, the game divides subject states into four levels of autonomy. Within each level, Autonomy has a numerical level between 0 and 1000. At 1000 autonomy, the subject may advance to a higher tier, or become free if it is already a Dominion. At 0 autonomy, the master may decrease autonomy to a lower tier, or annex the puppet entirely if it is already an Integrated Puppet. Changing tiers costs 50 Political Power, while annexing a subject or becoming free costs 300 Political Power.

Subjects of a fascist country have a different system, with some similarities. While there are fewer levels of autonomy (3), more autonomy has to be increased overall to break free (or decreased to annex), as autonomy is now numerically classified from 0 to 1600 at each level. Changing levels is the same as in other puppets, with a 50 political power requirement to change, and 300 political power to gain freedom or annex the subject.

Subjects of Japan (and Manchukuo if it becomes independent) have yet another system. There are only 2 basic autonomy levels, with an alternative level unique to Manchukuo (Imperial Subject). Moving from Imperial Protectorate to Imperial Associate requires 2400 autonomy and 50 political power, whereas moving from Imperial Associate to freedom requires 1600 autonomy and 300 political power. The Imperial Subject level caps at 1000 autonomy, and disallows freedom until the national focus "Independence War" is completed.

This section may contain outdated information that is inaccurate for the current version of the game. The last version it was verified as up to date for was 1.3.

Both overlord and subject actions can change autonomy. In general, the subject helping the overlord increases its autonomy, while the overlord helping the subject decreases it.

Lend-leasing equipment to the subject lowers autonomy by 1 for every 100 production cost of the transferred equipment. For example, giving 1000 Infantry Weapons I (unit cost 0.5) will lower autonomy by (1000 * 0.5 / 100) = 5 units. The equipment must be at least as good as the best equipment of that type the subject can produce with its own technology, so dumping obsolete equipment will have no effect (lend leasing obsolete equipment from a master to a puppet might decrease the puppet's autonomy. This master-to-puppet effect needs to be confirmed. In one posting in the Bug Report forum, the British lend-leased 10,000 basic infantry equipment to the British Raj, lowering the Raj's autonomy by 30).

Similarly, the subject lend-leasing equipment to the overlord will raise autonomy by 1 for every 100 production cost. The equipment must be as good as the best the overlord can produce, so draining a puppet of obsolete equipment does not weaken authority over the puppet.

The overlord building factories or other constructions in the subject lowers autonomy by 0.7 for every 100 production output invested. For example, building a military factory, with a cost of 3600 units, will lower autonomy by (3600 * 0.7 / 100 = ) 25.2. Note that it's not possible to build in a dominion's territory, except through focus construction that provides an autonomy reduction.

If the overlord trades for the subject's resources, the subject gains 0.04 autonomy per day for every 8 resources taken.

The subject gains autonomy for its contributions to the overlord's warsExact formula TBD

This section may contain outdated information that is inaccurate for the current version of the game. The last version it was verified as up to date for was 1.3.

Puppets can break free from their puppet masters, however, this cannot be done peacefully if the player wishes to do it swiftly. In vanilla, increasing support for a different ideology than the current government through political advisors and triggering a civil war is the only way of breaking free; once the war starts the newly independent government will be at war with the original puppet government who may still call the puppet master for help. Once that happens, the fate of this struggle for independence depends on whether the rebels are able to overpower both the master and the loyalists. If the puppet succeeds they will get the chance to puppet their former overlord.
If the player owns Together for Victory, one can also become independent by increasing autonomy enough. The puppet master can counter this however, by decreasing autonomy through the above methods. This means that breaking free peacefully is possible with Together For Victory, but it is a slow and complicated process.

The scale can be thought to go from 0 to 4000 or from 0 to 1, but as almost all program files use the 0 to 1 scale, the rest of this section will consider 0 to be annexed and 1 to be free.
In the game files, all of the different types of subjects can be found at:

For now, two mechanics need to be understood about subjects, each found in the subject_type.txt files in this folder:

allowed = { }

min_freedom_level = (value 0 to 0.99, it is advisable to give every subject a unique value)

The allowed value determines whether a subject type is allowed for a country, a reichskommisariat for example uses:

allowed = { has_government = fascism }

Any puppet places all of its allowed puppet types on the 0-1 autonomy scale, with min_freedom_level representing a subject type's lowest possible autonomy score (given as 0 in-game) and the highest possible autonomy being the min_freedom_level of the puppet type directly above.